Resurrecting the urban wasteland

It
took a public shaming from the New York
Times before it was released, but state money to fund brownfield cleanups
is finally flowing to where it was intended.

Last
week Governor Pataki and the leaders of both houses of the state legislature
announced a breakthrough that freed $30 million to help with the cleanup of
some of the state's worst post-industrial wastelands. And $390,000 of that will
be headed to Rochester for three separate local efforts.

But
that money almost didn't materialize, thanks to budget-season politics in
Albany. The story has its roots in the state's complex laws regulating
brownfields --- a shorthand designation for polluted sites that aren't bad
enough to make the Environmental Protection Agency Superfund list. Many of
these sites are still too contaminated to be safely redeveloped, frequently
requiring substantial --- and costly --- cleanup. And that often translates to
the loss of jobs in small to mid-sized cities, greater health risks, and the
encouragement of sprawling suburban development.

In
recent years the state has created programs to clean and turn around these
eyesores. But up until 2003, municipalities participating in such programs had
to obtain the title to the property that needed cleaning before funds could be
released. As local environmental attorney Linda Shaw says, "That's always been
difficult."

Shaw, who has substantial
experience working on brownfields, explains that cities (or towns, villages, or
counties) seeking to take over potential brownfields were often trapped between
two financially crushing extremes: either the contaminated site had too much
potential commercial value (and therefore commanded too high a price) or the
site was too contaminated (and too potentially expensive to clean).

"Rochester's
done an incredibly good job [turning over brownfields], but it's difficult,"
says Shaw. "It's not easy to do."

Then
in 2003 the state passed a brownfields law that allocated $15 million a year
for cleanups and included a program that circumvented the title dilemma.

But
even then, help wasn't quite on the way. Bickering over how to divide the money
kept legislative leaders from releasing the funds during the program's first
two years. When Pataki added another $15 million to the fund in this year's
budget, Senate Republicans moved to block it until the first $30 million was
spent. All of this hit the pages of the New
York Times on March 17. That Times
article also reported that grassroots efforts by groups from mainly poor, urban
neighborhoods had pushed a resolution through New York's City Council calling
on the state to release the money.

Less
than a week later, the governor and both legislative leaders were announcing
that they'd signed the memorandum, sending the $30 million to more than 50
projects around the state.

Projects from
both
the City of Rochester and Monroe County made the list of those receiving
funding. The county received $150,000 to conduct an initial study looking for
pollution on the site of Renaissance Square; "The area is characterized with 15
potential brownfield sites," read the terse press release from Pataki's press
office.

Meanwhile
the city received $90,000 for a similar exploratory study --- and the
subsequent creation of a plan for redevelopment --- of a nearly 400-acre tract
west of the Genesee River in the Lyell Avenue/Lake Avenue/State Street area.

"That's
[the city's] next project area and that's probably their most challenging,"
says Shaw, citing the nature of the pollutants the city's likely to find in
abandoned industrial sites there.

The
city's economic development corporation is also getting $150,000 to investigate
a 30-acre area around the Village Gate complex at North Goodman Street and
Anderson Avenue (much of it along a rail corridor). Shaw, who's worked with
Village Gate owner Gary Stern on the project, describes it as an actual "poking
holes in the ground" investigation of several adjacent properties to see what's
there. Depending on what's found, "They want to do more apartments and artists'
lofts, etcetera, along the lines that it already is," she says.

Stern,
who'd begun developing in the area more than 20 years ago, says he's "very
excited" about the possibility of further development in the area.

"It's
a great area," he says "It just needs some tender loving care."

Shaw
compares the changes in store for Village Gate to a similar makeover of the
city's East End. The cleanup there and the transformation that followed went
somewhat unnoticed, she says, because it was gradual. But "really, they turned
that neighborhood around." (She points to the former car dealership that now
houses Spot Coffee as an example of a brownfield given a second life.)

In
fact, Shaw has mostly glowing words for the city of Rochester and its
brownfield coordinator, Mark Gregor, who couldn't be reached in time for this
article.

"The
city of Rochester has been really good at utilizing all these programs," under
Gregor's watch, she says, ranking among the best in the state --- along with
Yonkers --- at redeveloping polluted sites.

"It's
good for Rochester to have this money because generally when a site is developed
it's good for the rest of the neighborhood," she says.